The elevator inside the laboratory rose through the mountain, straight into its summit.
When the heavy metal doors slid open, a strangely unsettling warm breeze washed over them, accompanied by the indescribable, low pulse unique to an enormous living organism.
The sight before Ace and Marco exceeded anything they had imagined.
The mountaintop was not a pointed peak, but a vast, level platform.
At its center rose a "plant" that defied description.
"This... what is this!?"
Marco stared at the enormous serpentine thing, utterly unable to associate it with a "flower."
Its entire body was an ominous black, its surface gleaming with the hardness of metal or a shell. At a glance, it measured seven or eight meters across.
Its winding "body" coiled around itself in a spiral, like a gigantic steel reinforcing bar stretched into a multilayered mosquito coil.
At the top of its "body," there was no "head," only a flat, circular cross section.
"This... is the Flower of Resurrection?"
Ace murmured. Even with his courage, facing such an impossibly oversized creation, brimming with an eerie sense of life, made his heart shudder.
It was nothing like the sacred or miraculous flower he had imagined.
Urouge pressed his palms together and quietly invoked the Buddha, his expression calm.
"This is the heart of the Alliance Leader and the Baron's research. Please wait here, gentlemen. Evacuating the researchers will take time, and we must ensure this place remains undisturbed."
But the disturbance arrived sooner than expected.
"Oh-! Found it! It's huge! And ugly!"
Accompanied by a clear, lively female voice tinged with distaste, three figures leaped up from the steep slope at the platform's edge and landed firmly.
They were Yamato, Ulti, and Page One.
With her kanabo resting on her shoulder, Yamato first curiously examined the enormous, coiled...